a pragmatic marketing publication productmarketing€¦ · one measure i use to gauge the health of...

productmarketing.comT h e M a r ke t i n g J o u r n a l f o r H i g h - Te c h P r o d u c t M a n a g e r s . A P r a g m a t i c M a r ke t i n g ® P u b l i c a t i o n

Vo l u m e 1 I s s u e 3 S e p t / O c t 2 0 0 3™

How to Make Less of a Mess inSoftware Product

Management

The

Market-Driven

Certification

Why Are We

Winning and Why

Are We Losing?

Change Now,

Change Later

Depending on whom you talk to,we are either near the bottom ofthe economic slump, or we havebegun the climb to more prosperoustimes. One measure I use to gaugethe health of the high-tech product

marketing segment is the number of new jobpostings. Two years ago, virtually all the postingrevolved around the, “Help, I just got laid off ”genre. Now I am more optimistic as I see avariety of new job postings every day in thehigh-tech marketing field.

Through this transition, the industry has beendramatically changed. During the dot-com andsoftware expansion, product management andmarketing personnel were hired to fill anexpanding vacuum created by a market withan insatiable appetite. Marketing positionswere in such demand that they were filled by recruiting from other parts of the companywith little or no marketing experience.Experienced people were recruited by othercompanies, offering larger salaries, causing the marketing employee retention period,in some parts of the country, to dip below 12 months.

Well, the bubble burstand managers in thesurviving companies

were faced with the gut-wrenching task of

deciding who to lay off.Having personally

participated in this task,I know that management

tends to gravitate to tenure,experience, qualifications and,

probably most importantly, thedelivery of value to the company.

Those who were kept, at least inthe minds of management, are

the ones who demonstratedmeasurable results.

Many who were cut, found it particularlydifficult to find employment in a saggingmarket, regardless of pay. With few credentialsand little experience, some have given up andchanged careers citing that they’ll never find a job in high-tech marketing again. They areprobably right.

Although the job postings are expandingevery day, those doing the hiring are beingmuch more selective. They want to hire strategicthinkers who, through experience or training,know how marketing can deliver exceptionalvalue to the company.

The economy is preparing to make acomeback. The industry has changed over thelast two years so you must ask yourself, “HaveI changed?” There is no better time than nowto prepare by improving yourself. Read somenew books, attend training, or quantify yourknowledge through certification. Preparing forthe unforeseen opportunities in the next twoyears will assure your likelihood of success.

Craig StullPresident and CEO

Pragmatic Marketing, Inc.

Have You Changed?

1 • productmarketing.com • September/October 2003

productmarketing.com • September/October 2003 • 2

Inside this issue:productmarketing.com

16035 N. 80th Street, Suite FScottsdale, AZ 85260

President and CEOCraig Stull

Pragmatic Marketing, Inc.

Managing EditorKristyn Marathas

Contributing WritersHarold FrostBruce HadleyNaseem JavedSteve Johnson

Barbara NelsonGabriel Steinhardt

No part of this publication may be reproduced,stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, inany form or by any means, electronic, mechanicalphotocopying, recording or otherwise, withoutthe prior written permission of the publisher.

productmarketing.com™ is available free of charge to qualified subscribers.For subscription inquiries or back issues call (480) 515-1411; or visithttp://www.productmarketing.com

For advertising rates, please call (480) 515-1411.

Other product and/or company namesmentioned in this journal may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respectivecompanies and are the sole property of theirrespective owners.

productmarketing.com is a trademark ofPragmatic Marketing, Inc. Printed in the U.S.A.All rights reserved.

About Pragmatic Marketing, Inc.

Based in Scottsdale, Arizona, PragmaticMarketing, Inc. was formed in 1993 to provideproduct marketing training and consulting tohigh-tech firms by focusing on strategic, market-driven techniques. Pragmatic’s training coursesemphasize business-oriented definition of marketproblems, resulting in reduced risk and fasterproduct delivery and adoption. Since itsinception, Pragmatic Marketing has successfullygraduated over 22,000 product managers andmarketing professionals, and was named one of the Inc 500 fastest-growing companies of2000. For more information about PragmaticMarketing and its courses, please visithttp://www.pragmaticmarketing.com or call 480-515-1411.

™

Special Features Vo l um e 1 I s s u e 3

3 How to Make Less of a Mess in Software Product ManagementUnderstanding the role of product management in your business can be very confusing. It can also make or break your company.

9 The Market-Driven CertificationBeing certified is really about investing in one’s self.Announcing a new product management certification program.

17 Part 2 of 3 Part Series

Why Are We Winning and Why Are We Losing?Exploring how we listen to the market to become experts in what they need.

23 Change Now, Change LaterIf your naming challenge is simply based on a hit or miss process,then you are definitely not going forward.

In This Issue

1 Have You Changed?The product manager’s job market has changed. Are you prepared?

8 Book ReviewsRead a good book lately? We’ve got several to share with you from our “top seller” list for product managers.

8 Ask the Expert

15 The Pragmatic Marketing FrameworkDistinctive Competence

22 Tools and TipsHow to conduct a successful webinar.

27 Case StudiesF5 Networks takes market insights to new heights.

31 Calendar of Upcoming Pragmatic Marketing Seminars

3 / productmarketing.com / September/October 2003

By Bruce Hadley, SoftwareCEO.com

In our 20+ years in the software business, themessiest job we’ve ever seen is product management.Not because it’s particularly dirty or greasy, butbecause so few understand it, yet nearly everyoneclaims that they do—and none will hesitate to tellyou how badly you’re doing at it.

And, this mess runs deep: Ask ten software CEOsto define software product management, and you’llget ten different answers. Ask another ten wherethe job ought to live, department-wise, and you’llget at least three different answers. Ask another tento put a price tag on the position, and you’ll get a range from secretarial to saint.

In terms of job security, there’s probably nothingdicier than VP of sales—especially in a soureconomy. But the product manager’s job is rightup there: To do it well, you need a renaissance-level assortment of skills, the charm and graciousnessof a career diplomat, and the hide of rhino.

So, what the heck does a software productmanager do? How do you know if you need one?And what are the prime mistakes to avoid inproduct management?

We recently caught up with Bill Corrigan, the VPof product management and marketing for Boston-based developer Softricity, founded in 1998.

Although the company isn’t huge—55 employees and about $6 million in revenue this year—Corrigan’s product management background isblue-ribbon: He previously worked for CalicoCommerce, a Kleiner Perkins-backed developerthat went public in 1999 then sold to PeopleSoft,and for IBM; he was the product manager forLotus Notes for over 10 years.

Since Corrigan now has both “management” and“marketing” in his title, we thought that a good place to start:

How To Make Less of


Q: What’s the difference, we asked,between product management andproduct marketing?

A: “Product management means buildingthe right product for the market at theright time, and helping Sales sell it,”Corrigan says. “It means understandingyour customer inside and out, so thatyou can deliver the right product to theright audience. Product managementputs the product on the shelf; productmarketing is getting people to take itoff the shelf.”

Okay, next question:

Q: Who should “own” product management?To whom should the product managerreport?

A: “Most successful companies have VPproduct management who reports tothe CEO or COO or VP marketing,”Corrigan says.

Q: Why not R&D?

A: “Don’t put it in engineering. You’ll endup developing an ivory tower complex.When the development group controlsproduct management, you tend to losecustomer focus, and you start drinkingyour own Kool Aid®.

“Engineers tend to get too inwardlyfocused, rather than customer focused,”Corrigan says. “Engineers are very goodat building, at sticking to schedules, atdrilling deep into the details. But ifR&D owns product management,you’ll get an inside-out view; if it comesthrough the CEO or marketing, you’llget a customer’s perspective.

Q: Then why not put the position in Marketing?

A: “Well, engineering types don’t oftenhave the listening skills required, butpure marketing types don’t have theability to establish what’s practical,”Corrigan says.

Q: Let’s say I want to hire a productmanager; where should I look?

A: “There are two places,” Corrigan says.“Many good product managers comeout of a traditional sales engineeringrole.They’ve been out talking to customers,working with customers, most of theirlives; that’s where I came from, in fact.Often, those people have the technicalwherewithal and the customer skills,but they may not have the discipline to focus on a set of deliverables.

“Second, I’d look at people who arecoming out of an engineering role withina professional services organization.They likely understand the technology,but usually have a lot more interest aboutwhat’s happening in the industry in general.”

It’s unlikely you’ll find a great productmanager who came from a marketingbackground, Corrigan says. “Those peopleusually don’t have the technical depththat’s necessary to be a good productmanager. First, they lack that curiositythat drives them to play with a product,to figure out what makes it work. Andsecond, they don’t have the credibilitywith the engineers. It’s sort of like theVenus and Mars thing—engineers are from one planet, and marketing is from another.”

But, lest you think Corrigan just has itin for marketers, he says it’s just as mucha long shot that you’ll turn one of your

developers into a successful productmanager. “It’s going to be a very, verygifted engineer,” he says. “Most goodproduct managers have come from aconsulting background, or a salesengineering background—they havebeen implementing. It’s highly unlikelyyou’ll pull someone right out ofDevelopment and put them in this role.”

Regardless of their background,Corrigan says it’s vital that they canverbalize well, and use multiple modesof communication. “You have to be ableto cut left, cut right, and run right upthe middle,” he says. “You also have to be the ultimate evangelist for your product.

“A product manager needs to be atechnical person who is the ultimatecommunicator. He needs to gatherinformation from customers, fromanalysts, VARs, and employees, thencoalesce it into a vision and a productplan that’s deliverable.”

Much of this is personality type,Corrigan says. “You want someone whois a good listener. Somebody who isinquisitive and wants to solve thecustomer’s problem—as opposed to someone who says, ‘I have a new widget and isn’t it cool?’”

Q: What’s the overlap between productmanagement and product marketing?

A: “Marketing is often looking at branding,how to capture mindshare—you’respending a lot of time with analysts andthe press,” Corrigan says. “You’re lookingat the best way to phrase this, to couchthis issue. Product management isdefining what a product could and

a Mess in Sof t ware Product Management


should be. It’s very hard to do both—most people tend to gravitate one way or another. I think they can report intothe same organization, but not to eachother—it’s good to have the twoseparate disciplines.”

Q: How does the product manager getcustomer feedback? How do you goabout contacting them?

A: “You get very close to the people whoare close to your customers—youbecome the sales people’s best friend,”Corrigan says. “The product managerneeds to proactively engage the directsales channel and the resellers, so if it’sthe ugliest, most gnarly situation,they’ll call you into it.”

“The other thing you need to do is geton a plane and go out and deal withcustomers eyeball to eyeball—especiallywhen they’re complaining. Set theexpectations correctly: If your productisn’t working as advertised, then yes, tellthem you’re going to fix that problem.

“But if it’s enhancement territory, youneed to be upfront—tell them you’rein it for the long haul, and you will lookat their requests and do whatever wecan. I’ll tell the customer, ‘I will fixbugs, I’ll communicate your needs, I’llelevate your most serious requests—and I’ll communicate that back to you.I can’t guarantee you’re going to get thisfeature, but I will get it into a queue,and I will let you know where it stands.’You must build credibility over time.”

Q: What happens when an overeagersales rep promises the moon?

A: “I have worked out plans with salesmanagement to explain why that’sdamaging over the long haul,”Corrigan says. “We’ve actually have putdiscouragements into sales compensationplans, to show reps that ultimately theyare the ones who will pay the pricebecause they have to look the customerin the eye.”

Q: At what point should you hire aproduct manager? Is it a function of size or number of products orsomething else?

A: “It depends on the dynamics of theteam, but you do need that productmanagement role filled first,” Corrigansays. “But the thing is, in a smallcompany the product manager isoftentimes the CEO—they become theperson who defines the product, theydirect engineers, and so on. In a smallcompany, you can get away with that.

"But if your CEO comes from a salesbackground, one of your first hiresneeds to be the product manager. Toomany software companies wait untilafter the fact—after product release—to realize the product was never definedto meet market requirements. Maybealong the line it got off track becauseno one was tracking deliverables otherthan the engineering team, or maybethey missed it altogether after a greatinitial idea.

“Either way, it’s a huge and very commonreason that companies fail: The productplan is a mess. I’ve done consulting forcompanies where they have 50 customersand 50 versions of the product, andtheir code stream is a mess.”

Q: Okay, that’s one example; what aresome other tell-tale signs that youneed a product manager?

A: Sign #1: Your engineers are spendingmore time out of the office than in.“It’s often because they are doing thejob the product manager should havebeen doing—either gathering data orevangelizing, because the marketingperson doesn’t have the depth to do it,” Corrigan says.

Sign #2: Sales is screaming for salestools (and creating what they need onthe fly). “Marketing can do the high-level stuff, but they can’t do the technicaldemos, the technical white papers, thestuff that comes up during the courseof the sale,” Corrigan says.

“So, you’ll see your sales people wastinga lot of valuable sales time creating thetools they need—competitive sell-againstsheets, FAQs, etc.—because they don’tfeel what they’ve got is effective.”

Sign #3: You look at product plans for the next two years, and you see you need an engineering team that’sfour times as large as what you have.Put another way: Your pipeline andsales forecast are predicated on featuresand products that are beyond your ability to build.

This happens for two reasons, Corrigansays: “First, sales doesn’t understand theproduct—so they’re selling futures.Second, you’re not managing the process.Stuff is getting thrown at the engineers‘unscrubbed’—usually from Sales.Everything is important, everything is urgent, and everything is a hugemarket opportunity.”

Q: What about the person managing theproduct manager? What are the mostcommon CEO’s/VP’s mistakes?

A: Exec’s mistake #1: Trying to force theirown personal views on the productroadmap. “I had a CEO once who, Iswear, had attention deficit disorder,”Corrigan says. “We had a well-defined,well-thought-out roadmap, and hewould read something in Red Herringmagazine about a successful IPO andsay, ‘Why aren’t we doing that?’ He’dyank engineers off a project, and thenrealize too late it was something wenever should have been pursuing.”

As an example of this type, Corrigancites Steve Jobs. “He was, effectively,the product manager for Apple. He’dcome out on stage at a big show andsay we’re going, to do this, and this,and this—and often it was the firsttime the engineers had heard anythingabout it.”

Exec’s mistake #2: Assuming that theengineers will deliver the right product.“This is the opposite of the first mistake,”Corrigan says. “The product manager’sboss needs to care about the roadmap,and needs to be engaged. Once a

How to Make Less of a Mess in Software Product Management

• As a high-tech executive, are you unclear about the strategic

role of product management?

• Does the role of product manager in your company need to

be defined to the CEO so support can be given to strategic

activities?

• As a product manager, do you strive to lead the organization

rather than react to it?

This half-day session is a subset of the Practical Product

Management™ seminar and introduces the industry standard

for high-tech marketing, the Pragmatic Marketing framework.

Refined over ten years and implemented by hundreds of

technology companies, this framework shows how Product

Management and Marketing personnel can move from

tactical activities to quantifiable, strategic actions that deliver

tremendous value to the company. This session includes

immediate actionable ideas about how to best establish the

role of Product Marketing/Management and define market-

driven products that make customers want to buy.

This seminar is open to anyone currently employed in high-tech

marketing, including seniormanagement, product marketingmanagers, and product managers.

There is no fee to attend, but registration is required via our website:

www.PragmaticMarketing.com

Seats are limited, so early

registration is recommended. See

available dates on back cover.

The Strategic

Role of Product

Management ™

Freeseminar!


quarter, I sit down with the seniormanagement team to say here’s wherewe’re going, here’s what needs to bedone—just to keep the awareness highand the momentum going. As positiveexamples of how execs ought to treatproduct management, Corrigan thinksPhilippe Kahn and Bill Gates standout. “Gates is unbelievably talented in that regard,” he says. “He can go toe to toe with any engineer with their project plan. He can walk intoany cube and Gates will know aboutthe technology and ask themchallenging questions.”

Q: But that sounds like mistake #1, wesaid; isn’t that micromanagement?

A: “You don’t want to tell them what to build, or to divert focus from theroadmap,” Corrigan says. “The trick—and what Gates does so well—is tocreate just enough tension to makepeople always seek out the best solution—to think, as opposed to just doingwhat they feel comfortable with.”

Q: Okay, let’s look at the other side; whatare the most common mistakes asoftware product manager is likely to make?

A: PM’s mistake #1: Getting tooentrenched on one side of the problemset. “This is by far the biggest danger,”Corrigan says. “You either get too deepin the design, almost becoming anengineer, or you spend too much timeon the outside and fail to bring thatinformation in.”

PM’s mistake #2: Not taking time todocument what you’re doing. “Being aproduct manager is a very disciplinedprocess,” Corrigan says. “You need togather all the information and documentit, so that people can see where you areand so that others can reuse your work.Your work is—or should be—thegenesis of the functional spec.”

PM’s mistake #3: Defining productsrather than market requirements.“Engineers get really bored whenthey’re just treated like code monkeys,”

Corrigan says. “You need to come inwith a really clear set of requirements—the market needs these three painsto be solved—then engineering needsto respond with, ‘we can solve thatpain with these 10 features.’

“Don’t engineer the product for yourdevelopers; define the problem set in a complete enough way so that it canbecome an iterative process on bothsides, drilling down to the definition.”

PM’s mistake #4: Not getting clearconsensus at project milestones. “Thishas happened at almost every companyI’ve been to,” says Corrigan. “You’rethree months into the schedule, theengineers have built something, andthe product manager or the customersays, ‘No, that’s not what we had inmind at all.’”

The fix, Corrigan says, is what he callsa product contract. “The contract getsall sides to agree that we’re not goingto deviate from this schedule. Theproduct manager promises thatengineering is not going to get yankedaround with requests for nine otherthings during this process.

“With that contract in place, all thedownstream activities can start muchearlier: the sales tools, training anddemos, research, the press and analysttour. Most companies do that stuff wayafter the fact, and that’s because there’sambiguity right up until three weeksbefore the code is frozen. That ambiguityslows the whole product-to-marketprocess down.”

Q: Where should aspiring productmanagers go to learn more?

A: “The training class I like the best isfrom Pragmatic Marketing—thoseguys are the best,” Corrigan says.

“From a book perspective, I love theGeoffrey Moore books, because theyencompass the big picture, and showyou everything that happens if youdon’t do it right. [Among Moore’s

titles: “Crossing the Chasm,” “Insidethe Tornado,” and “Living on the Fault Line.”]

“Another good one is Jerry Kaplan’s‘Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure’—it’s kind of funny, because he’s the bestperson in the universe he’s ever met,but the stuff his company goes throughis very interesting from a productmanagement perspective.

“I also recommend ‘High Stakes, NoPrisoners’ by Charles Ferguson—he’sthe guy who conceived and builtFrontPage. He wrote a thesis at Harvardabout how to bring that product tomarket, then went out and did it.”

Note from SoftwareCEO: We didn’t prompt Bill Corrigan to mention PragmaticMarketing®, but we’re glad thathe did—and we agree thatthey’re the best. That’s why werecruited them to teach a classfor our Software University onlineseries: “The Role of the HighTech Product Manager,”scheduled for October 9.

A veteran of three startups,SoftwareCEO Inc. founder BruceHadley spent 20 years in softwaremarketing, sales, and operations.One of those companies went public,and the other two were sold to muchlarger software firms. Before foundingSoftwareCEO, an online resource forsoftware executives and entrepreneurs,he was editor of one of the industry’sleading news and research publications.

Copyright © 2003, SoftwareCEO Inc.This article originally appeared atwww.SoftwareCEO.com. Reprinted withpermission.

How to Make Less of a Mess in Software Product Management

pm.c


I love tradeshows! I think they are great for gatheringinformation about the market, the competition, andthe latest technology. But obviously your productmarketing person has other ideas for creatingawareness. And so, you’re just going to have to trustthat she knows the best way to generate awarenessand leads. That’s what she does.

I think it’s best if you focus on product managementand let your counterpart do the product marketing.You need to learn about the market and thecompetitive landscape; she needs to decide the bestmethod to communicate the product message.

The best role for a product manager at a tradeshowis not to work in the booth, but to work the show.You may decide that you want to attend importanttrade shows even without a booth, as a venue for learning about the market. Check out thecompetition’s demo, attend presentations by vendorsand users, and most importantly, meet people whoare not in your booth. The information you need in order to build better products can be found at atrade show; it just can’t be found in your booth.

Steve joined Pragmatic Marketing

in 1996 after 18 years in software

and hardware. Steve’s background

includes technical, sales and

marketing management positions at

software companies. His market-driven

orientation allowed him to rise rapidly

through the ranks from product manager,

where he launched 22 product offerings, to

vice president.

I’m a product manager. My product marketing counterpart and Idisagree over whether we should have a booth at an upcoming tradeshow. She says we have all the leads we need, but I think it’simportant to have a presence at the major shows.

What are your thoughts? I think there is value in terms of establishing mindshare.

Book Reviews

Ask the Expert

email your questions to [email protected]

The PC Is Not a Typewriter:A Style Manual for CreatingProfessional-Level Type onYour Personal Computerby Robin Williams

Schools continue to teach typing incorrectly.In the 21st century, a world of proportionaltypefaces, you never use two spaces betweensentences. You never underline words;underline means, “I can’t make italics onthis typewriter.” The PC Is Not a Typewriterdrills into kerning and fonts and is filledwith many, many tips on creating professionaldocuments usingtoday’s tools.

The Non-Designer’s DesignBook by Robin Williams

Uh oh, now you’re creating brochures andletterhead and other design projects. Thisdesign books show various projects withbefore and after examples to illustrate thefour key points of good design: contrast,repetition, alignment, and proximity.

The Non-Designer’s Web Book: An Easy Guide to Creating, Designing, andPosting Your Own Web Site by Robin Williams

And now we’re making web sites... againwithout design skills. Williams uses hercommon sense to showyou how to create aprofessional-looking website.

The Agenda by Michael Hammer

As the author of “Reengineering theOrganization,” Michael Hammer begins hisnew book by apologizing for the misuse of“reengineering.” It was supposed to be abouttightening processes and not about firingpeople. Hammer then introduces the nineplanks of his new platform about becominga better vendor by better servingcustomers. He implores us tolook at the company from thecustomers’ view, which hedescribes in the chapter called “Be ETDBW” (easy to do business with).

Revisiting reengineering, he commentsthat products generally get released due toindividual heroics, despite the best efforts ofthe company to prevent the release. Doesn’tthat sound familiar? What businesses need isa repeatable method for success that relies onprocess rather than every success being amiracle. There will certainly be some quotesfrom this book that product managers willwant to pass around the office.


In response to the growing need and as part of its own continuing development, PragmaticMarketing decided to embark on a lengthy projectand develop a product management certificationprogram. This was a clear business decision, assuch a program could easily be based on thecompany’s accumulated professional body ofknowledge, and would be a natural extension ofPragmatic Marketing’s reputable training programs.

The result was the new “Pragmatic MarketingCertified Practitioner” (PMCP) certification programwhich finally provides product managers/marketerswith a designation to differentiate themselves,validate skills, gain professional acknowledgment,and demonstrate a commitment to the productmanagement or product marketing professions.

Building a certification program

Building a true vendor-neutral product managementcertification is a colossal, if not impossible, task.There are many varied product management stylesbeing practiced by individuals and variouscorporations. Not being an exact science, it wouldbe time consuming and not particularly useful togather all known product management practicesand test candidates on every aspect of the productmanagement discipline. However, it is possible andvery practical to teach and test individuals on adefined set of best practices and proven methodsof performing specific tasks in product management.This is the essence of the PMCP certificationprogram and also its core value.

With the premise of examining individuals onverified methodologies, the PMCP program wasbuilt from the ground up with the intent to test anindividual on the level of knowledge he/she hasregarding a defined set of best practices and provenmethods of performing specific tasks in productmanagement, as taught by Pragmatic Marketing.

Every certification program needs to fit its audience,industry, and the challenges that await certifiedcandidates in their ongoing job tasks. Following a thorough analysis, Pragmatic Marketing reacheda decision to design the PMCP program as a high-stakes certification program with an intermediaterating of difficulty.

How it all began

Discussions about the need for a product marketingand management certification appeared a year agoin several of the online communities dedicated to

product managers/marketers. Much of thetalk centered on the lack of existing venues

that would allow a person to validatehis/her professional competency,

or assess it in others. Indeed itbecame apparent that the productmanagement profession hadreached relative maturity andacceptance as an evolving art andscience, but with limited subjectmatter consolidation andopportunities for certifying

expertise.

It was further noted thatproduct managers were

always multi-disciplinary, andas such, titles and the associatedresponsibilities vary throughoutthe market; thus adding to the

complexity of understanding theskill sets and abilities that people

might possess. Many lamented therewas simply no common way to evaluate

product management professionals, and as a result, companies and organizations wereemploying different criteria, tests and interviewstyles in order to expose and/or qualify a candidate’sor an employee’s professional skill set.

Pragmatic Marketing, Inc., who has helped createmany online discussion forums (a.k.a. local productmanagement associations), was listening to thosemarket voices. After all, they apply what theypreach—being “market-driven.”

The Market-DrivenCertification

By Gabriel Steinhardt


High-stakes certifications are regarded as personal achievements that impact thecertification candidate’s career and theeffectiveness of the organizations that employor use those individuals. In addition, high-stakes certifications are classified as thosethat require passing a proctored examinationat an authorized testing center.

After deciding upon the above objectives, ateam of SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) wasassembled to begin test development—along, systematic and very methodical processdesigned to ensure test validity (same contentis taught and tested) and reliability (certifiedindividuals should be able to apply theknowledge at their workplace).

There were no major integration needs sincethe certification program and seminar’scurriculum was fully integrated “by-design.”

Being certified has its value

Being certified is really about investing in one’sself. It’s the type of non-tangible investmentthat demands much effort but yields a hostof returns in both the short and long term.

The whole notion of certifying high-techprofessionals began at Novell® during itsheyday in the late 80’s. The burden placedon Novell’s technical support staff by networkadministrators seeking help, was overwhelming.To counter the mounting pressure, Novellembarked on an education and certification

program designed to produce competentnetwork administrators who would bedesignated as CNEs (Certified NetwareEngineers), and thus a new industry wasborn. Many were to follow suit and majorcorporations such as Microsoft®, Oracle®,Cisco® and others soon had their owncertification programs.

The benefit of certifying employees quicklybecame obvious to employers. For companies,it meant a key element of differentiation inan increasingly competitive world and a verystrong marketing tool that customers trust.On the performance side, employers notedthat certified employees demonstrate higherproductivity and provide better service. Thiswas a major revelation and a driver for recruitersand human resource managers to includecertifications as an occupational requirementin job descriptions.

Certified individuals have also directlyexperienced the benefits of being certified.In the 2002 Global IT Training andCertification Study conducted by severalsponsors and Prometric (a testing andassessment services company), 54% ofcertified respondents indicated they receivedsome form of reward from their employerfollowing successful completion of acertification. The breakdown was: 18% claimeda salary increase, 20% were entrusted withnew responsibilities and 9% were promoted.Most assuring was the fact that 32% ofcandidates surveyed and 34% of alreadycertified respondents cited credibility as the top reason to seek certification.

The PMCP certification program is perfectlyaligned with that top reason (credibility),relative to product marketing andmanagement professionals.

Pragmatic Marketing, who is focused entirelyon technology and has trained over 22,000high-tech product managers/marketers, isfinally in a position to offer a crediblecertification based on curriculum contentthat has been time-tested and continuouslyenhanced during the full decade the companyhas been in business.

In addition, the PMCP program was designed,developed, and administered entirely by thirdparty organizations. Pragmatic Marketing’srole has been to shoulder all the expensesincluding legal, development, operational,and promotional expenses.

Pragmatic Marketing will receive absolutely no revenue from the certification program soit doesn’t fit the typical “for profit” certificationscenario. This approach qualifies the PMCPcertification program as yet another exampleof Pragmatic Marketing altruisticallycontributing to the benefit of the productmanagement community.

The real world

Committing oneself to long hours of learningis not an easy task, but one that is neverregretted. The challenge of staying focusedand maintaining an effective study regimehas swayed many from reaping the value in certifying their expertise.

However, it’s quite simple to chase away the study and test preparation jitters. In her excellent book, “Get Certified and Get Ahead,” Anne Martinez devotes a fullchapter and discusses in detail various studytechniques and study modes to improvecontent retention and understanding. Shealso addresses ways of leveraging yournewfound certified status to gain maximumreturn on investment.

Many at all levels of the corporate hierarchyhave come to realize the value of PragmaticMarketing’s product managementmethodologies and the inextricably linkedbenefits of becoming PMCP certified.Every certification program needs to fit its

audience, industry, and the challenges

that await certified candidates in their

ongoing job tasks. Following a thorough

analysis, Pragmatic Marketing reached a

decision to design the PMCP program as

a high-stakes certification program with

an intermediate rating of difficulty.

The Market-Driven Certification

Dan, a California-based senior-level productmanager with over 20 years of softwareindustry experience, expressed his viewson Pragmatic Marketing’s training:

“I took Pragmatic Marketing’s Practical ProductManagement seminar in 2001. Barbara Nelsontaught the seminar and it was one of the bestseminars I had attended. I thought I understoodthe basics of marketing and product managementafter studying those topics in an MBA program,but the Practical Product Management seminartaught me much more. It opened my eyes to the complexities and simplicities of ProductMarketing. The Practical Product ManagementModel for Success (grid) provides a clear pictureon the product marketing framework from boththe strategic and tactical perspectives. The modelshows you what you need to focus on to be asuccessful product marketing manager.”

Daniel, a vice president of industry solutionsand marketing with a leading eBusinesssoftware vendor, described his personalmotivators for attaining PMCP status:

“For me it was obvious to proceed with thecertification. From a professional point of viewI think that the certification will give mesomewhat of a “moral high ground” in debate.My company views Pragmatic Marketing as the fundamental marketing boot camp for this industry (software). Being certified, I think that I will be able to invoke a bit of extracredibility. Personally the certification will helpme to demonstrate that I possess a disciplinedapproach to product management, whichshould help to open doors throughout my career.

My preparation has been simple. I recently tookthe Practical Product Management course andI have been studying my notes and the coursematerials. I am confident that this will prepareme for the exam.”

pm.c

With the new PMCP certification program, Pragmatic Marketing is able to offer the product

manager/marketer a comprehensive solution for increasing productivity in the workplace

and better chances for career advancement.

Gabriel Steinhardt is an independent product managementconsultant who pioneered and designed Pragmatic Marketing’sPMCP certification program.

A marketing and information systems MBA with over a decade ofexperience in product management and marketing in the computersoftware and hardware industry, Gabriel has assumed diverse seniorand director-level roles with major corporations and startups in

marketing, product management and technical undertakings. For additionalinformation, please visit http://www.blackblot.com


Conclusions

With the new PMCP certificationprogram, Pragmatic Marketing is ableto offer the product manager/marketera comprehensive solution for increasingproductivity in the workplace and betterchances for career advancement.

The combined offering of Training and Certification provides productmanagement professionals with aunique package that holds truecomplementary value. PragmaticMarketing’s seminars and certificationallow professionals to acquire knowledgethey need and prove they haveretained it.

Companies always want to hire thebest people available and now for thefirst time they have a tool that allows

them to instantly isolate productmanagers who have demonstrateda certain level of competence andcommitment. The Pragmatic MarketingCertified Practitioner program is a toolthey will be able to use and trust as itchallenges product managers withquestions that deal with real-worldscenarios and problems.

Summing it up, Craig Stull, PragmaticMarketing’s President and CEO, wasrecently quoted as saying, “For a decadewe’ve helped many companies investin their product managers. Now weare helping product managers invest in themselves.”

For additional information about the PMCP program, please visithttp://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/

Please answer thefollowing questions:

• Can you gather market inputfrom your customers and salesteams over the web?

• Is this information organized in a reusable fashion?

• Can you automatically share and communicate this data with everyone including development?

• Can you easily prioritize requirementsbased on market demand?

• Can you easily produce instant MRD reports?

If you’ve answered “NO” to one or morequestions above, we invite you to

schedule a demo and see the power of FeaturePlan for yourself.

As a Product Manager, you’re probably overwhelmed byfeatures, ideas, product requirements and market intelligencedata that’s spread across a number of databases, applicationsand/or spreadsheets. Keeping this information organized and easily accessible can be a nightmare.

FeaturePlan Collaborative Server is the only product life-cyclemanagement software designed to support the methodologyof Pragmatic Marketing,® enabling you to electronically capturemarket feedback, and then track it through the productmanagement process so you can create, plan and delivermarket driven releases of your products.

Built by Product Managersfor Product Managers

For more information about how FeaturePlan can help, call us today at:

1-866-796-2832Or visit our website at:

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Helping you create, plan and deliver market-driven releases of your productsHelping you create, plan and deliver market-driven releases of your products

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Build market-driven products by

listening to the marketThe Practical Product Management course fully explores the role of technical

product management, providing tools and a framework to help get products

to market more efficiently. This comprehensive course offers real-world

product management techniques—using software and hardware case studies

from enterprise-level to desktop products and services.

Product marketing activities are analyzed in detail with tips for how to be

effective at the strategic elements and how to manage multiple tactical

activities. This seminar is a challenging program that emphasizes strategic

product marketing and market-driven management. Every concept is

designed to be actionable as soon as you return to the office.

The third day of the course drills down into the often-difficult process

of articulating product requirements. Using concepts from the prior two

days, students learn a straightforward method for creating product plans

that product managers can write, developers readily embrace, and that

result in solutions that the market wants to buy.

Learn what

every product

manager

needs to

know

High-Tech Product Marketing Training

Course designed for:Product managers or marketing managers and directors; marcom specialists

and product developers. You should attend if you manage or contribute to

aspects of product marketing and management.

Call (800) 816-7861or go to

www.PragmaticMarketing.comto register!

Days 1 – 2I. Strategic Role of Product Management

• What is marketing?• Definition of the role of product management• Contrasting product management and product marketing• Assigning ownership of responsibilities• Identifying the “first steps” with gap analysis

II. Market Analysis• Distinctive competence• Market research• Market problems• Technology assessment• Competitive review

III. Quantitative Analysis• Market sizing• Sales analysis• Product profitability• Win/loss analysis

IV. Strategic Planning• Business case• Buy, build, or partner?• Pricing• Thought leaders• Innovation

V. Product Planning• Product definition• Positioning• Sales process• Roll-out process

VI. Case Study

VII. Delineating Responsibilities• Communicating market facts to Development,

Marcom, and Sales• Drawing the line between Product Management

and the other departments

Day 3 Requirements That Work™

(for those who write requirements)

VIII. Building the Market Requirements Document (MRD)• Writing requirements• Implementing use-case scenarios• Programming for the “persona”• Determining product feature sets• Creating the MRD

IX. Analyzing Business and Technology Drivers• Reviewing specifications• Prioritizing the product feature set• Creating the Business Case

X. Getting (and Keeping) Commitments• Product contract• Getting the product team in sync• Getting executive support• Communicating the plan in the company

and in the market

Still not sure

Practical Product

Management

is for you?

Attend a FREE 1/2-day session.

See back cover for details.

Practical Product Management™


Competitive Review

Does your distinctive competenceensure a competitive edge?

Until you can describe your distinctive competence, youcannot differentiate your product from competitive offerings.

Innovation

Leverage distinctive competence

We should encourage innovation and innovative thinking.But the measure of success is not cleverness. Successfulinnovation solves market problems creatively in ways thatleverage distinctive competence.

Market Sizing

Which markets value yourdistinctive competence?

Only the leader in a market makes any realmoney; the rest squabble over the leader’sscraps. Can you identify a market that valuesyour distinctive competence? Is a leadershipposition possible? Is this market large enoughto sustain your business?

Practical Product Management™ introduces a framework that gives product managers the tools to deliver market-drivenproducts that people want to buy. It focuses on the practical aspects of juggling daily tactical demands of supporting thechannel with strategic activities necessary to become expert on the market.

CompetitiveReview

MarketAnalysis

QuantitativeAnalysis

DistinctiveCompetence

MarketSizing

STR

ATE

GIC

The Pragmatic Marketing® Framework

Distinctive CompetenceWhat are your unique abilities to offer superior value to a customer? Distinctive competence is why a customerdoes business with your company instead of one of your competitors.

Every business has a core capability that is unlike any other business—a distinctive competence. Thisdistinctive competence holds the essence of thecompany’s differentiation and provides guidance for decisions throughout the marketing process.

For some, distinctive competence is an excellent channelthat truly knows the market and the product; for some,it is brilliant innovations that are deployed to solve marketproblems. Perhaps you have installed your domainexpertise in your products and services. Maybe yourdistinctive competence is that you simply executestrategy better than anyone else.

What phrase is synonymous with your company name?Over time, successfully leveraging distinctive competencebecomes the heart of your company brand. Distinctivecompetence must be leveraged in all aspects of productmanagement and marketing, especially productdefinition and positioning.

The Pragmatic Marketing® Framework


Positioning

Communicate distinctive competence

Positioning communicates your product messageand should call out how your distinctive competencemakes a difference to the buyer.

Pricing

Premium price yourdistinctive competence

It’s hard to charge more than your competitors forcommodity products and features. But features thatleverage your distinctive competence become uniquein the market and command a higher price.

Buy, Build, Partner

Build only to distinctive competence

How does one know when it’s appropriateto build versus buy? And when should weseek partners instead? The answer: distinctivecompetence. You should always build toyour distinctive competence, and eitherbuy or partner for the rest.

Watch for future issues of productmarketing.com as we continue to highlight and further explore the framework.

Sales Tools ChannelSupport

TACTIC

AL

StrategicPlanning

ProductPlanning

PromotionalCommunications

Innovation

Pricing

Buy, Build,Partner Positioning

ChannelSupport

© 1993-2003 Pragmatic Marketing, Inc.

A model for successful product managementA model for successful product management


Why Are We Winning

This is the second part of a three-

part series exploring how we listen

to the market to become experts in

what they need. The first article

(featured in June 2003 issue)

showed how product managers

should listen to potential customers,

the inactive members of our market

who have not bought our products

or our competitors’ products (and

are not looking). This second article

discusses finding and listening to

evaluators. The third article

covers on-going communication

with our existing customers. By

listening to all three types, product

managers become “experts on

the market.”

Recent evaluators can make the truestassessment of our products. Havingjust evaluated the product against thecompetition, they can assess ourcompany’s strengths and weaknesses.Perhaps most importantly, fromevaluators we can learn about problemswith the product and also problemswith the buying and selling process.

Listening to evaluators is differentthan listening to potential customers,but just as important. This is anactivity that can be outsourced (butnot to Sales—win/loss analysis is amarketing function). If Sales doeswin/loss analysis, they often won’t getto the real issues. Often the buyer doesnot want to reveal the real reasons forfear that the sales person will try toovercome their objections and attemptto restart the selling process. But evenif you outsource this to someone else,product managers should plan ondoing at least one win/loss analysisinterview personally every month.

So where do we begin?

First we have to identify evaluators.Who are evaluators and how do wefind them? Evaluators are those peoplein your market who have recognizedthey have a problem to solve and areactively looking for solutions to theproblem. They are looking at yoursolution and at your competitors’solutions. This is the part of themarket that your sales channel is mostfamiliar with; they are active leads inthe sales funnel. Finding evaluatorsdepends on the type of sales channelyou use. The more anonymous peopleare during the sales cycle, the moredifficult it is to find them. Here aresome tips to find evaluators, based ondifferent sales channels:

Type of Channel: Web

How you find them... Wins are easier totrack on the web. You should require minimumcontact information (name and email address issufficient) when they buy your product or service.Losses are more difficult, but you might offer afree trial or limited service for which they mustregister on your site. If they don’t buy after aperiod of time, follow-up and find out why. It isnearly impossible to track down those who neverdownload or register with you at all. You mayneed to periodically conduct market researchsurveys where you tap into your market segmentand find out if they have ever considered yourproducts or services.

By Barbara Nelson


Why Are We Losing?

Type of Channel: Direct

Pipeline ReportsHow you find them... Buyers in the sales cycledisappear from the pipeline report when you win the deal, lose the deal, or when there is “no decision.”Sales management should be able to provide you with this information.

Sales CallsHow you find them... If the sales people are not cooperative in reporting wins and losses, do this:when you are asked to participate in a sales call, make it clear to them that you will be collecting business cards and will be doing win/loss analysis after the deal is won or lost. If this is the case, Sales and Marketingmanagement should try to improve the situation—Salesand Marketing should have a cooperative relationship,not an adversarial one.

New User TrainingHow you find them... Go to a new user trainingclass. Recent “wins” will be there. Collect business cards to follow-up with a win/loss interview later.

Type of Channel: Value Added Reseller (VAR)

Pipeline ReportsHow you find them... Losses are hard to find outabout, particularly if your sales staff did not assist the VARon the deal. If your internal sales staff helps the channel ondeals, you should track the deals through the sales cycle.Like pipeline reports with your direct sales channel, thisprovides wins and losses when an account drops off of thereport.

If you don’t assist your indirect channel with the salesprocess, try visiting some of your channel members and dowin/loss analysis on a subset of their evaluators. Includeboth successful channel members and not so successfulones so you can analyze why some are more successfulthan others. It might be lack of sales sophistication, lack offocus on your product, lack of training, or any number ofother things. Unless you know why they win or lose deals,you won’t know how to improve the situation so they canhave more wins.

If you are part of a large organization with multiple products and solutions in a complex sale, it is critical that win/lossanalysis be coordinated. The evaluator shouldnot get four phone calls from four differentproduct managers asking for the sameinformation. “Don’t you guys talk to one another?”

�


What are wetrying to learn?

Typically, companies believe they “listen” toevaluators during the sales cycle. But moreoften, they react to individual deals. “If youput feature A in the product, I can win thedeal.” Or, “I could have won the deal if we’dhad feature A in the product.” The sales repthen says, “Put feature A in the product.”

Sometimes, the right thing to do is putfeature A in the product. But sometimes,feature A is put in the product for a marketof one, not a market of many. It is a reactiveprocess, not a proactive process.

Rather than reacting to individual deals andpotentially squandering precious resourcessolving a problem that one customer hasversus solving problems a whole marketsegment has, win/loss analysis can provideinformation to validate (among manyevaluators) what we’re doing right and whatwe’re doing wrong. Why are we winning andwhy are we losing? This type of analysishelps us strengthen (and institutionalize)what we do right and correct what we’redoing wrong. Many times, the reasoncompanies lose business is not because ofthe product, but because of a flaw in thesales process. And yet when they react to lostbusiness, they usually throw more featuresinto the product rather than fix the process.Win/loss analysis looks at the whole picture:product, services, price, evaluation process,sales channel, collateral, competition, technicalexpertise, and interaction with the company.

When do we listen?

Win/loss analysis should be performed whenthe deal is completely closed. Either thecompetition or we have solidly won the deal(the contract is signed, the ink is dry, andthe check has cleared the bank). If we dothis too early (and we were winning), it ispossible we might raise some questions inthe buyer’s mind that causes us to lose thedeal (Product Management will be blamed,even if it wasn’t our fault).

If we do this too long after the deal isclosed, the buyer’s memory will fade. We aretrying to measure what happened during thesales cycle, and if they are too deep intoimplementation and use of the product, theiranswers will reflect their current views, notwhat they were thinking during the buyingprocess. In general, a win/loss call shouldoccur two to four weeks after the deal isconcluded.

Where do we listen?

Visiting evaluators onsite in their naturalhabitat is by far the best scenario. You willlearn things onsite that you will never learnin other settings, particularly details aboutthe competition. However, it is sometimesimpractical (or difficult to get permission) to do this for every win or loss. Augment onsite win/loss analysis with other methods,such as phoneinterviews. If you sell over the web, a short web survey can be effective, too.

Why Are We Winning and Why Are We Losing?Generally,we want to know:

• Why are we winning?

• Why are we losing?

Specifically,we need to learn:

• How did they find out about you?

• Who did they listen to foradvice during the buyingprocess?

• Were your communicationsclear?

• Were there any breakdownsduring the sales cycle? Whatwere they?

• What is the competition doingright? Are they winning becausethey have a better product orservice? Or is it because they areoutselling us?

• Do you have the righttechnology, the right product, theright services to solve theevaluator’s problem?

• What problem were they tryingto solve with your product orservice?


How do we listen?

Although product managers should do atleast one win/loss report per month, therest of these can be outsourced (as long asyou read every report and analyze whatyou learn). Sometimes an objective third-party will be more successful uncoveringthe reasons we win and lose because thebuyer trusts that they are not trying to re-open the deal.

Here are ten tips onlistening to evaluators:

1. Make sure the evaluator knows you arenot trying to save the deal (if you lost).Maintain this integrity by not passingthe deal back to Sales if you lost due tosomething that can be fixed. Learnfrom it and move on.

2. Develop a questionnaire that includesboth closed-ended questions (multiplechoice, rankings, yes/no) and open-ended questions.

3. Ask if you can record the conversation.If the evaluator agrees, you can go backand review the conversation not only forcontent, but also inflections and tone.

4. If the reason the evaluator says theywent with the competition is price,follow-up later to really understandthis. Was it because the sales personwasn’t able to clearly articulate thedifference in value between yoursolution and the competitor’s? Was itbecause the buyer didn’t need theadditional value you provided for thepremium price? Or is your price reallytoo high?

5. If the reason you lost is the salesperson,drill down on this. It might not bebecause the salesperson is incompetent.It might be lack of credibility, whichmight be the result of lack of trainingon the product or the industry. It mightbe because the salesperson needscoaching in uncovering the buyer’sneeds.

6. Listen! Your job is not to re-open thesales deal if the buyer went with thecompetition. Your purpose is to learnwhy. If the buyer says they went withthe competition because you don’t havefeature X (and it is your best feature!),you simply need to listen. Somethingclearly went wrong in the sales processfor them to have this perception.

7. Plan on a 15-minute interview. If youfind the person is particularly open, askif they’d be willing to participate in alonger, more in-depth interview at atime convenient to them.

8. Record all win/loss interviews in adatabase so you can share and analyzethe information.

9. Use win/loss data to quantify featuresyou need to add. Rather than simplyreacting to a single data point from thelast sales deal, analyze whether you areconsistently losing business becauseyou are lacking a key feature.

10. Always ask, “What problem did youthink you were solving with thisproduct or service?”

Win/loss analysis can give us data tovalidate the things we are doing correctlyand insight into what isn’t working. It is a more effective way to learn the strengthsand weaknesses about the competition(not just about their products, but alsoabout their sales expertise). In the absenceof win/loss data, we typically react toanecdotes from the sales channel, whichmight reflect a market of one and not amarket of many.

As a product manager, do at least onewin/loss interview per month yourself.The market expertise and insights youwill gain will far outweigh the time spenton the interview.

Stay tuned for Part 3 about Listening to Customers.

Why Are We Winning and Why Are We Losing?

Barbara Nelson is an instructor for Pragmatic Marketing. She has 21 yearsin the software industry, including vice president of product marketing for a leading provider of business and accounting applications for the middlemarket. Before her decade of product marketing experience, she worked closelywith customers in several capacities, which taught her the importance oflistening to the customer and to solving critical business issues.

pm.c

Course designed for:Those responsible for market analysis,quantitative analysis, strategic planningand business aspects of high-techproducts.

I. Building Business Cases• Why write business cases?

• Understanding the perspective of senior management

• Defining the essential elementsof a business case

• How to get control of the situationas the CEO of your product

II. Market Sensing• Gathering information from

prospect and customer interviews

• Effective primary and secondaryresearch tools

• Essential competitor informationand where to get it

III. Opportunity Validation• Target market segmenting

• Market sizing

• Positioning into the competitivelandscape

• Market Adoption Cycle™

assessment

IV. Planning & Analysis• Essential information sent and

received from Development,Marcom, Sales and other internal areas

• Building the pricing plan• Creating tactical plans• Building the financial model,

human resource and riskassessments

• International considerations

V. Selling the Plan• Writing and editing the

business case• Laying the groundwork with

the key decision-makers• Presentation approaches

VI. The Product (or Project)Termination Decision• Early warning signs• Gathering facts• Reasons to keep or terminate

products/projects• Evaluating alternatives

Build acompelling

business case for your

high-techproduct

Analyzing Market Opportunities is a two-day course that illustrates

how to properly listen to customers and prospects, evaluate their input,determine market opportunities for any high-tech product—and build

a compelling business case.

The course includes a systematic,disciplined methodology to

understand potential opportunities,accurately size the market, assess

costs and evaluate risks.

A template is provided for compiling and presenting the business case. Also discussed

is how and when to terminate an existing product.

Analyzing Market Opportunities™

Product Marketing TrainingHigh-Tech

Call (800) 816-7861 or go to www.PragmaticMarketing.com to register!


Tools and Tips

One of the hottest new ideasmade possible by the internet is the webinar. A webinar is apresentation delivered andattended entirely over the web.The webinar makes a lot ofsense for both presenter andattendee, particularly as travelingbecomes more expensive andmore difficult. The presenter can interact with people withoutleaving the office; attendees canattend from all over the world,getting access to presenters thatwould not normally come totheir area. The presentation canalso be played later for thosewho could not attend the live webinar.

It seems a webinar is the perfectvenue for most formal presentations.Yet, something is missing. For all its high-tech convenience, awebinar lacks a human touch.I guess sometimes you just haveto look someone in the eye, tosee and hear responses, to makea human connection.

I recently gave a webinarpresentation and made thesenotes about how to do thembetter in the future.

Technology

For the presenter and attendee,the technology is very straight-forward. Client software managesthe slides and voice. All the serverpieces are hidden from theparticipants so they canconcentrate on the presentation.

To have a successful webinar,have everything loaded early.The presenter should have awalk-through a few days in advance to ensure theequipment and software areoperating correctly together.The attendees should arrive afew minutes early to downloadand install the enabling clientsoftware.

I used a wireless LAN from my computer to a cable modem.Imagine my shock and disbeliefwhen the LAN connectiondisappeared during thepresentation! Luckily itreappeared quickly. Themoderator had noticed myabsence and filled the void untilI got back to the presentation.So I guess I’ll avoid usingwireless connections in thefuture.

It’s truly amazing to watch awebinar with someone who isextremely conversant in theclient software. While talking,a good webinar presenter alsopoints to areas of the screen,underlines key phrases, draws agraphic to illustrate the point.

I’m not much of a webinarpresenter. Instead of focusing on speaking, I was overwhelmedwith widgets. There are querytools and attendee notes, anddrawing tools, and a list of theslides, and more. I’ve learnedthat I don’t multi-task. Whiletrying to find a certain graphical

tool, I would notice silence, andrealize that the silence was fromme—I was no longer speaking!Apparently, my brain shut downmy verbal center while activatingmy motor skills. I suggest youhave someone else run the clientso you can focus on deliveringthe content.

Have a LiveAudience Anyway

Although webinar technologyallows you to give a presentationto people all around the worldfrom the privacy of your home,I suggest that you have a liveaudience anyway. What wasmissing for me was audienceparticipation—feedback that myideas were coming across. Wasthe presentation moving tooslowly? Was I talking too quickly?Did my idea even make sense?With a live audience, you cansense body language— leaningforward or back, smiles andfrowns, crossed arms—to adjustyour presentation. The webinarclient has tools to simulate thisbut it was yet another area of thedistraction that took my mindaway from my message.

Having a few friends in the roomgives you a “live” audience. Smilesshow the joke worked. Noddingindicates that your topic makessense. Frowns mean you shouldexplain again.

Because I was running the clientsoftware, I sat in front of thecomputer during the webinarbut ultimately felt uncomfortableand constrained. Since I normallypresent while standing, in thefuture I will use a headset with a long cord and stand up. Justlike a “real” presentation.

Webinars Are Great

Despite being a few years old,webinars are still in their infancy.Wide adoption of broadbandand live video should help. Iinitially used a dial-up connectionwhen preparing for the webinar;I was amazed at how good voiceover IP (VoIP) works even on amodem. Of course, video failsover a dial-up. Now that I havebroadband, I’m experimentingwith voice and video over theweb. All I can say so far is, “Itcertainly isn’t like in the movies!”

Webinars are great: they connectyou with people you couldn’tnormally see. And since it’srecorded, people can replay thewebinar at a time more convenientfor their schedules. However,a webinar cannot completelyreplace face-to-face interaction.In the end, most customerinteraction means that you have to go visit somebody.

How to Conduct a Successful Webinar:a presenter’s viewBy Harold Frost

pm.c

By Naseem Javed Javed on NamingChange Now, Change Later

1. Your corporate name is identicalor similar to thousands of others.

When a corporate name is heavilydiluted and shared by hundredsand thousands of others in all kindsof businesses, then a name is simplylost in the crowd. Also, when a nameis a borrowed word from a dictionary,making it a part of everyday lingo,it never achieves any distinctionand despite extraordinary expensesin advertising and promotion, itsimply dies out of exhaustion. Openany old business magazine and itwill unfold like a cemetery of deadcorporate names.

2. Your name is too old to convey today’s dynamics.

Established as a great icon of aperiod, sometimes a name crawlsout of history, reflecting the greathuman toil by the founding fathersbut somehow not at all suitable for

the current agile, cybernautsand the digital savvy human

force of today, surrounded withemerging technologies and facing

an explosive future. Corporatecommunication constantly strugglesto shed the old image by promotingthe future vision of the companyand tries hard to appear youngand futuristic. But, like a grumpy

old patient in a nursing home,these types of names struggle

and slowly linger fordecades and always fade

away in the end. Any oldpublication will providethe proof in black and white.

3. The spelling of your corporatename requires a higher IQ.

A large majority of corporate namesare spelled creatively to fit a logo orto avoid a serious trademark problem.Here, common sense and the scienceof corporate nomenclature are abusedat the risk of being too sexy anddifferent. This twisted spelling onlyensures obscurity. The mindcontinually rejects the corruptionof a familiar word and refuses toremember specific alpha-structures.After all, if a name can be spelledin four different ways, then youwill only end up with 25% of thehits and profits. This type ofcreativity doesn’t help. These sparksof geniuses end up kindling firesand eventually causing seriousdamage.

4. You spend more moneyexplaining the origin of yourcorporate name.

If a name cannot simply relate tothe business and requires constantexplanation of its obscure, yet cute,origin and how it fits overall to thebusiness, then it becomes a dailyroutine for advertising to educatethe universe of this dysfunctionality.The poor consumer, the lost end-user, and the over-burdenedpopulation of the world at large,doesn’t really care what the namemeans to you, rather simply what it means to them. Corporationsand ad agencies thrive on gettingawards for their creative efforts andadvertising gimmicks for pushingtheir side of the story, while theconsumer simply shuts off.

Why do corporate image and name identities die a slow death?

Globally speaking, every hour, aroundthe clock, seven days a week, a major

corporation is forced to change itsname. Sometimes it’s good news, whenthere is new adventure in the air. But at

times, and often, it’s very bad news,when a corporate name becomes a

liability, a burden, injured in a trademarkbattle. When simply it is no longer

capable of ringing the cash registers.Here are seven reasons why.


If you already have a world-class,unique, powerful, globally trademarkablename which is highly related to yourspecific business and it also has anidentical dot-com, congratulations—you can stop here. No need to gofurther. It’s champagne time. If not,you should seriously consider changingit fast, the sooner the better. Justremember, no amount of moneyspent will be able to save the name in the long run.

Eeny-Meeny-Miny-Mo,Catch a Name by the ToeNever, never, pick a name out of ahat. It’s a bad thing. If your namingchallenge is simply based on a hit ormiss process, then you are definitelynot going forward. Remember, pickingnames out of a hat can also happenmore than once: 1) When you andyour staff pool up a large list ofnames and pick one out of sheerdesperation. 2) When you ask an ad agency or a, so-called, world-classidentity firm, who also go through anidentical exercise with their internalstaff or creative freelancers. They endup picking a name from a very largehat—normally, the day before thepress conference.

Are you still holding anold magazine? The proof of embarrassing nameannouncementscovers mostcenterfold ads.

Myths, Facts and Rules“We are out of names” is only a mythsuccessfully established by advertisingand logo shops. Thus leaving theclients with strange, weird, and oftensilly, names. Contrary to belief, thereis no shortage of unique, powerful,one-of-a-kind, trademarkable, corporatenames. What is short is successful,proven methodologies and highlyreputable professionals with successfultrack records. So therefore, what youneed is a professionally-executednaming strategy, guided by a Mastersof Naming Architect. Ask your agencyif they can produce such a professionalwith a track record, otherwise they areonly picking names out of a hat.Naming is a serious black and whiteexercise and it should never be confusedwith color, design, logos and brandingcampaigns, which only becomeimportant after a name has beenselected under the guidance of a namingarchitect.

5. You do not own a trademark with an identical dot-com.

If you do not legally own a corporatename then what’s the point of theexercise? Why bother at all? Everytime your name is advertised it simplyhelps the industry at large and yourcompetitors. Also, you don’t build anybrand values and equities and yourentire advertising and marketing dollaris wasted. A large majority of corporatenames in business today are not globallytrademarkable and most do not havean identical dot-com domain.

6. Your name is embarrassing in certain countries.

Globalization is a fact of life. A namemust work like a marketing weapon,not only in your own country butalso around the globe. There is noneed to hide under the desk becausethe name is embarrassing or profanein a foreign language. A large majorityof names today do not work efficientlyon the international scene and causean ongoing stress in gaininginternational recognition.

7. Name is too long, too difficult,too complicated or too boring.

When a name is too long it getsinitialized. This unwanted processchanges the entire meaning and liststhe name in strange categories. When a name is too difficult, confusing orboring it becomes a different animal to different people. Strange namecombinations, due to M&A, end uptelling more than one story and causesconfusion in the marketplace. Weirdterminologies, alphanumeric structures,using upper or lower cases, dashes orslashes and other dingbat characters ina name will only ensure self-destruction.



Naseem Javed is asyndicated columnist,author of Naming forPower, Founder of ABCNamebank International,www.abcnamebank.com,and an expert on corporate

naming issues. Naseem is a committedfollower of sobriety in corporate andcommunication strategies and a harsh critic of the “beer commercial” mentality on namingand the influence of voodoo branding on ourculture. A hilarious speaker, he has a powerfulmessage on why Global Name Identities are on fire.

© Naseem Javed [email protected]

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Change Now, Change Later

Corporate Image& TrustworthinessHow to re-gain customers and shareholders confidence

Corporate image-makers and brand agencieshave only hurt themselves by ignoring thecorrect methodologies required for propernaming. Agencies asking sub-contractors to hire freelancers to do their brainstormingand run focus groups, or exercises to pool5,000 names over five months for few millionsto come up with PHOOFFS, are finished.Extreme exercises with executives locked upin a boardroom, in the dark, each with aflashlight, making letter signs to form wordswhile the other half tried to decipher, arelost in the darkness along with theirOINGA BOINGA names.

If this is the end of logo design, then whatis the future for Corporate Identity Services?This offers a great leadership opportunityfor providing well-executed name identity,under the guidance of Masters of NamingArchitects. After all, there never was ashortage of great names, just lack ofexpertise and wisdom.

Seven Remedies from the Brand New Laws of Corporate & Name Identity Image 1. Respect: A name must have an alpha-

character to qualify and gain respect—aface of honesty, integrity, reliability andcredibility. No room for “PurpleFrog”“PinkRhino,” “Globe-a-Con” or “TomorrowInc.” Sobriety must prevail becausecorporate names are not beer commercials.

2. ONE Face, ONEName: Stand up with a

happy, healthy face. Don’t try too many masks and transmit multiple

personalities. This can seriously blur theimage. Advertising is wasted in harnessing a common mind share. Is the name sellingaccounting or space navigation, computersor distilled water? Honest names are trulyhonest about what they do.

3. Current Status: If you think you’re on topof the world, then show it with your name.Old-fashioned names will not attractcustomer’s attention to your ongoingevolutions. Glories of the past often losetheir value with the changing times. Facecyber-branding realities of tomorrow’sglobal e-commerce.

4. Become A Star: Have a star quality inyour brand name. Its alpha-structureshould be bright, clear and shiny. Don’teducate the universe on how to spell,pronounce or remember a weird spellingor obscure origin of a blunt, klutzy name.No need to be a matchstick when it canbe a flashlight.

5. Freedom To Travel: Spread your wingsand fly away. Wander country to countrywith your name-identity and exploreglobal opportunities. No room fordifficulties of global translations,connotations, secondary meanings,foreign obscenities, pronunciations and allother language issues. Today, marketing isONLY global, BURN all the other booksthat say otherwise. Think locally, butname universally.

6. Pride & Joy: Be a leader. Set an example.Take pride. Introduce it globally with fullconfidence. Why the embarrassment? It’snot stolen, or is it? Watch competitorsstruggle with confusion, dysfunctionalitiesand embarrassing naming stories. Shinewhere others hide.

7. Rightful Ownership: If you own acorporation, why not its name? Today,93% of corporations do not own aglobal trademark with an identicaldomain name. This is the easiest thingto do. Shortages of global names are onlymyths successfully established by designfirms. Fix it immediately as there is nowinning without a global trademark with an identical dot-com.

In Summary At this moment, there is a much bigger war of branding image going on out there. Corporations are fighting for global positioning while shareholdersare frightened by the fake hoopla. For thosegenuine, honest and progressive corporationsof the real economy armed with realisticgoals, there are still a lot of opportunities to stay clear of these corrupt, polluted and damaged name identities. Seek outprofessional naming solutions to yourmarketing needs making sure that yournames are on solid ground and can pass the acid test of trustworthiness.

Product Marketing TrainingHigh-TechRequirements That Work™

Course designed for:Product managers and lead productdevelopers. You should attend if you areresponsible for defining and deliveringhigh-tech products. Product managers getmore from this course when trainedsimultaneously with their counterparts in Product Development.

I. Defining Roles and Methodology• Understand the source of

conflict between Developmentand Marketing

• Define clear roles andresponsibilities

• Introduce a product planning methodology

II. Gathering Input• Channels of input to

product planning• Organizing product ideas• Quantifying market needs

III. Building the Market Requirements Document

• Writing requirements• Implementing use-case scenarios• Programming for the “persona”• Determining product feature sets• Creating the Market Requirements

Document (MRD)

IV. Analyzing Business andTechnology Drivers

• Reviewing specifications• Prioritizing the product feature set• Creating the Business Case

V. Getting (and Keeping)Commitments

• Product contract• Getting the product team in sync• Getting executive support• Communicating the plan in the

company and in the market

Createexecutable

MarketRequirements

Documents thatresult in product

solutions yourpotentials want

Requirements That Work is an intensive one-day course that introduces a straight

forward, repeatable method for creating easy to understand product plans that win.

This course teaches product managers how to write a Market Requirements Document

that developers will read, understand and readily embrace. The result? Feature/benefits

solutions your market will want to buy.

This training establishes clear roles for team members, teaches a process that creates an

executable plan–and delivers solutions that sell.



Case Study

In the world of air traffic control, theycall it “pushing tin”—rapidly guiding a vast array of aircraft into and out ofairspace without a hitch. In the world of Internet traffic management, they call it F5 Networks. F5 Networks is the industry leader in Application TrafficManagement, sending Internet trafficinto and out of the best place at the besttime. With the advent of Web services,the explosion of mobile computing,and increasingly unpredictable networkenvironments, that job has never beenmore critical.

F5 manufactures intelligent, hardware-based application switches that enableenterprises and service providers to directtraffic over the Internet and deliver IPapplications and Web services with highavailability, performance, and security.Founded in 1996, F5 has grown to nearly500 employees and $110 million inrevenue annually.

Because F5’s approach to directing Internettraffic is breaking new ground and solvingincreasingly complex challenges, thecompany’s product management team is on the frontlines of the industry,analyzing new market opportunities andgathering intelligence that will help thecompany build market-driven products.As a hardware company, F5 needsadequate lead-time to build thoseproducts and bring them to market.Consequently, the product managementgroup must be able to accurately predictmarket trends and demands some 18months or two years into the future.

According to Dan Matte, vice presidentof product marketing and managementat F5 Networks, “We are, in effect,placing a bet far into the future aboutwhat the world will look like based onour research. The cost to change courseis higher in a hardware or blendedenvironment than in a pure softwareenvironment. From my perspective, havinga sound methodology to help us gatherinformation and predict market needs isabsolutely critical.”

A Catalyst for Change

Trouble is, the product management teamat F5—like most companies—was toobogged down in tactical chores to focusits resources on strategic marketing. “Wespent too much time on sales support anddemos, even wrote copy for our marketing

F5 Networks Takes MarketInsights to New Heights

“We have dramatically improved

our process for collecting customer

requirements and our knowledge

of what’s going on in the

market—with customers and

prospects alike, even companies

that evaluated our gear and chose

not to purchase it.”

communications group,” remembersMatte. “We burned our cycles doingprojects that other people in theorganization were quite capable ofdoing. We didn’t pay enough attentionto the strategic things that would mattermost to the company over the long run—like analyzing our market or evaluatingour sales pipeline to determine the impactof different positioning on productprofitability.”

He continues, “We knew we had aproblem. Like many things, admittingyou have a problem is the first step.Our next step was to call in PragmaticMarketing® for a highly-focused seminaron strategic product management. Weneeded a shot in the arm to get backinto gear and work smart. Pragmatic wasthe catalyst to change our focus, and forus, that change was wildly successful.”

Maximizing Customerand Prospect Interaction

In its product management seminars,Pragmatic Marketing offers a blueprintfor strategic product marketing thatfocuses on communicating with targetmarket segments in order to addresshigh-value prospect problems. For F5,that course sparked a renewed emphasison maximizing customer interaction.“We have dramatically improved ourprocess for collecting customerrequirements and our knowledge ofwhat’s going on in the market—with

customers and prospects alike, evencompanies that evaluated our gear andchose not to purchase it,” says Matte.“We have always been good at visitingpeople, but we changed the back-endmethodology in terms of what we dowith the data we collect. Today, we arebetter at taking inputs and putting themin the ‘big blender’ to determine how toboost our revenue by doing what’s bestfor the market.”

F5’s customers have noticed the differenceas well. “Our customers love the interactionthey have with us, the opportunity toadd their two cents to what happenswith the products over the long term.We pick their brains about how they use our products and the new challengesthey want to tackle and how we fit. Thoseinteractions have been priceless,” heremarks. “Now we are in the process ofspreading that net more widely aroundthe globe, and we’re paying more attentionto the opinions of people who are notyet F5 customers. Talking to moreprospects has revealed an increasingpercentage of people who are not highlynetwork savvy, but are knowledgeableabout Windows. In product management,we need to address that persona in orderto enter new markets and capture thosepotential customers.”

The Voice of the Market

As a result of those efforts, the productmanagement team has taken on aleadership role within the organization.“When people at F5 want to find outwhat is happening in the industry andwhere we’re headed, product managementis the first stop for information. Theylook to this group to provide guidanceabout the market—through requirementsdefinition, positioning documents,personal interaction, and public speaking.When someone wants to hear the voiceof the market, they come to the productmanagement group.”

For Matte and his team, the most tangibledifference from implementing thePragmatic methodology comes frombeing able to point to actual, underlyingdata to support decisions. “For example,we can go to the development

productmarketing.com / September 2003 / 28


To feature the product management success at your company, contact [email protected]

team and say, ‘For our Big-IP®

product, 92 percent of thepeople prefer a graphical userinterface,’” he explains. “Wenow have concrete data to steer our products in the right direction.”

Another example of the valueof hard market data resultedfrom research about thecompany’s iControl™ interface,a subscription-based trafficmanagement service. SaysMatte, “We discovered thatwhile numerous people weredownloading the tool, arelatively small percentage wereactually implementing andusing it. So we conducted asurvey to identify the stepsthey went through anddetermine where we werelosing people along the way. Inthat process, we identified twodistinct drop-off points andfocused our efforts to helpcustomers get past them andbegin utilizing the solution.When we presented to ourexecutive team, rather thanspeaking in generalities, wewere able to state exactly whatwas happening, why it washappening, and what weneeded to do to fix it. Thatdata made the story crystalclear for our executives.”

He adds, “The ability to quantifywhat we are seeing has made abig impact internally. Beyondthat, the team can nowarticulate what it is that themarket is asking for in a waythat makes sense to differentaudiences within the company.That is a huge win, becausenow everybody can use his orher own expertise to do thebest job possible based on theinformation we provide.”

Making a Statementwith Positioning

To communicate that marketinformation, the productmanagement group has createdand distributed compellingpositioning statements to variousorganizations throughout thecompany, including Development,Sales, and MarketingCommunications. The impactof this solid data on time-to-market for effective productsand sales tools has beenprofound.

Matte offers an example,“Our marcom team has done a wonderful job of using thepositioning statements to driveentire ad campaigns. Previously,we spent a lot of time inmeetings, lots of email backand forth, lots of iterations ofad copy. With clear, consistentmarket direction, our marcomteam can run with it andproduce high-impact campaigns,which they have done very well.

“That frees product marketingto evaluate different ways totarget messages to differentgroups and assess what is mosteffective. As a result, we cantarget resources and budgettoward the more effectiveprograms and messages—andmaximize our return oninvestment,” he emphasizes.

The Pragmatic methodologyhas also strengthened the team’sinteraction with the developmentorganization. “We have alwayshad a good relationship withDevelopment, and they trustour gut instincts,” says Matte.“But without real market datato guide product direction,agreeing on releases takes alittle more convincing. Socustomers might not see desiredenhancements in the nextversion. Or a release might notbe quite on the mark. With thismarket-focused approach, thatdoesn’t happen. In fact, weincluded developers in thePragmatic Marketing training,knowing it would be good tohave more folks embrace thismethodology. One of thedevelopers who attended thesession said, ‘Thanks forincluding us in today’s session.This was one of the mostvaluable seminars I’ve been toin five years, heads above otherseminars. We should meet inthe next month and plan howto enhance the next release.’That’s pretty impressive.”

Strengthening TeamEffectiveness

For Matte, the biggest impactof implementing the Pragmaticmethodology has been increasingthe overall effectiveness of hisproduct management team. “IfI were speaking as one managerto another, I would say withconfidence, ‘Follow the PragmaticMarketing approach and becomemore effective.’ For us, Pragmaticwas the only solution. Amongall the information that crossesyour desk, you can always spotpeople who have been to aPragmatic course. When youlook in their offices, the seminarmanual is on the desk and it’sopen. Or the grid is pinned to the wall. It’s one of the fewtools you refer to again andagain. To me, that speaks volumesabout the value of the program.”

He concludes, “At the end of the day, the Pragmaticmethodology helps both ourtop line and our bottom line.We can point to increasedeffectiveness in terms of howwe spend our marketing dollarsand manage the cost of goodssold. Ultimately, we can pointto how we have increasedrevenues by entering newmarkets or addressing ourexisting markets moreeffectively. Those are all directresults from embracing thePragmatic methodology.”

Case Study

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Product Marketing TrainingHigh-TechEffective Marketing Programs™

Course designed for:Product managers, marketing managersand directors, industry marketingmanagers, and marcom managers. Youshould attend if you are responsible formarketing strategy or the programs thatdrive revenue, customer retention, andbrand awareness.

I. Roles and Responsibilities• A structure for effective programs

• Balance needs of the sales channel

• Accountability for revenue andother goals

II. Prospect Profiles• Why prospects don’t hear you

• Attributes of successful messages

• What the sales channel really needs

III. Program Strategy• Strategy is science, not art

• Eliminate the “list” of activities

• Optimize program assets

• Achieve results stakeholders truly value

IV. The Marketing Plan • A business case for programs

• Correlate budget to measurableresults

• Build consistent managementsupport

V. High-ROI Sales Tools• Create a strategic website

• Move leads through sales pipeline

• Manage endless requests for new tools

• Objective measures of effectiveness

VI. Measurable Program Execution• Generate leads that produce

revenue

• Best practices for customerprograms

• Gain perspective on awarenessprograms

• Measure program results without CRM

Createmeasurable

growth inrevenue,

awareness,and customer

retentionEffective Marketing Programs is an

intensive two-day course that illustrates best practices for programs that have a

quantifiable impact on revenue, marketawareness and customer retention.

Through real-life case studies, you will see how companies of all sizes get their

message heard in markets both large andsmall. Take away skills and ideas that

immediately impact your results, and thenpay dividends throughout your career.

Price increase

effective

Jan. 1, 2004.

Register now!